“…the writer is still working on the script, he’s doing his rewrite right now. We saw the first draft and we just had a few little things we wanted to take away or add and he’s doing that. The plan is to shoot that in the fall,” Billy Bob Thornton told us way back in 2012. That’s really just an example of how long the sequel to “Bad Santa” has been brewing, but now it’s officially moving forward.

Miramax and Broad Green Pictures have announced that Thornton will reprise his role as Willie Soke, and production on “Bad Santa 2” will start in January in Montreal, Quebec. However, there’s not much else in the way of details. There’s no word on who has penned the script, or who will be directing. Steve Pink (“Hot Tub Time Machine,” “About Last Night“) and Doug Ellin (“Entourage“) had been linked to the project in the past, but that was a long time ago. As for the original helmer Terry Zwigoff, don’t count on him returning behind the camera.

As he shared with us a few years back, Zwigoff had a horrible experience making “Bad Santa.” The Weinsteins had meddled with the picture, and at one point shot and added scenes that Zwigoff refused to do himself. The filmmaker also clashed with executive producers the Coen Brothers over the casting of Tony Cox (the siblings thought he was wrong for the role). Zwigoff wound up going to arbitration with the DGA to retain some kind of control over the movie (he said most of the material the Weinsteins added wound up being cut anyway, since it didn’t work), and on the subject of a follow-up he stated quite simply, “I have no interest in sequels.”